awards

Goodreads

My Writing Progress: An Update by Charles F. French

It has been quite some time since I have done a post about my current writing progress, so I thought I should do one right now.

I have just finished the first draft of my second book on writing; this is a bit ironic because it is about helping writers complete first drafts. The plan is to have this book out in the fall of this year, so I still have much work to do on it.

I am also a bit into the second draft of my as yet unnamed fantasy/horror novel set in South Dakota. I hope to have this revision done this year.

Finally, I am finishing putting the last touches of polish on my YA ecological post-apocalyptic novel The Ameriad: The Monastery of Knowledge so that I can submit it to several agents who expressed interest during the 2018 Writers Digest Conference this summer.

That is an excellent question. I do work on only one first draft at a time, and I spend the majority of whatever time I have to write on a given day on working on that first draft. The rest of the time I work on a revision of an earlier draft. Typically it is either about a 60/40 or 70/30 split of time. Does this make sense?

Yes, that makes sense. Theoretically, it should take fewer ‘cognitive resources’ (whatever that means) to edit an earlier draft than write a first one. So, spending the majority of your time on the harder task would be the way to go.